- I went in there
with just wanting a nose job and my lips done
and he made me feel like my entire face was messed up.
I left in tears because I thought I'm so hideous.
(tense music)
My name is Shana.
I do anti-aging research and consulting.
- My name is Tanesha, AKA Vitiligo Queen.
I do a lot of advocacy for vitiligo awareness.
- Hi, I'm Rena, and I'm an actress.
- My name is Carly.
I'm a healthy lifestyle coach.
- My name is Sagar Patel,
and I'm a facial plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills.
- My name is Nicola Lowery.
I am a physician assistant practicing aesthetic medicine.
I've been practicing for 14 years,
and I'm a national trainer for Allergan,
the makers of Botox and fillers.
- [Erin] Can I please have
my natural beauty folks on the left
and my cosmetic surgery group on the right?
The cosmetic surgery industry
exploits people's insecurities.
- I don't think the industry as a whole does,
it's money, right?
So I think there's motivation behind women
not feeling good about themselves
and I do think there are certain companies and individuals
who would exploit that
in order to make it more lucrative for them.
It just makes sense.
That's how businesses work.
- Some places where I've worked,
they tell you like, bring out those insecurities
because I want them to buy these products.
- You mean like at a training,
they tell you that. - Right,
and I'm not gonna do that to someone.
It's like, "Oh, well you have this, this, and this wrong.
Maybe you wanna fix it?"
I'm not gonna do that to somebody
and create an insecurity in them
that maybe they knew they had and not playing on it,
or maybe they didn't know but now they do.
- Definitely.
I was only 18 when I called for my consult.
I said I would like to have a consult for a rhinoplasty
and lip injections.
And he gave me that I needed cheek implants,
I needed to have my brow line shaved down
because changing my nose
would change the entire shape of my face,
and I felt very much so like he just saw me as money.
- There's good doctors and bad doctors
and in the end, the important thing to realize
is that doctors are trying to do good for other people.
There's exceptions, but it's a professional society
where our goal is to help other people.
And, you know, initially going into the cosmetic world,
especially, it's a multi-billion dollar industry
and as a doctor, you're always taught
a couple of laurels from benevolence to do no harm.
- The insecurity is inherent in all of us.
Some of us have more, some of us have less,
but it was already there.
And, you know, does the cosmetic industry
capitalize on our insecurities?
Sure, I think that there is a piece of that
but as all industries,
they're just trying to market to the people
that are going to utilize their product.
- [Erin] I wish I could change something
about my appearance.
- Yeah, I feel like
just because I wanna change something about my myself
doesn't necessarily mean that I don't accept myself.
Those are the thoughts that prompt me
to work on acceptance of myself.
- Something that I come across a lot in my practice
is not so much that someone wants to change
the way that they look,
but they want to preserve it.
There's a lot of issues,
especially with women with the aging process.
It's not so much that they wanna be somebody else
or they wanna look like somebody else,
but they wanna stay looking like them.
I fully intend to do a facelift when the time is right
and not because I wanna look different
but because I wanna continue to look as young as I feel.
- Yeah, I think for me,
major decision for me to get cosmetic surgery
was that I was in my early 20s
and I had had a massive weight loss.
I naturally lost the weight.
I lost 175 pounds and my skin looked like a 90 year old.
So for me, I consider it more like reconstructive
and kind of getting back to what I was supposed to be
before I did, you know, some damage to myself.
- For me, I spent my entire childhood
into my early adult life
wishing I looked different.
I promised myself that I would never ever tell myself,
"I wish I had this,"
"I wish I looked like this"
'cause I found that triggered
things for me that brought back
places that I used to be with my eating disorder.
- I think that's great
and I hope you don't take offense to this,
but you're gorgeous.
- Right. - Thank you.
- And I feel like, if I was naturally that, like, beautiful,
it wouldn't be that hard to be like,
"Oh my god, my face is gorgeous,"
you know, I'm gonna accept myself.
There are people
who have facial deformities and body deformities
like what kind of, what I consider what I went through.
It's a little harder.
- Yeah. Oh, definitely.
Yes, might have a pretty face
but I was always the largest of all of my friends,
the largest of my family.
Five years of my life,
I spent constantly, constantly waking up in the morning
and picking apart every single part of my body.
I can't continue this constant terrible habit of bulimia
or I'm going to die,
so it was just...
- I was horribly bulimic for a year and a half,
like it was awful.
- Yeah.
- So I get it, yeah. - Yeah.
It's not easy.
- [Erin] Cosmetic surgery can empower you.
- I do wish that every woman
could wake up and look in the mirror
and be like, "I am so beautiful just the way I am,"
but I also think that if you can do something
to give yourself that feeling,
then that's really great
and that is a beautiful thing.
- So one of the questions
we actually asked on our questionnaire
is what are your motivations for surgery.
And someone who says, "I can't get a boyfriend,"
you know, "I'm getting bad grades
because I have this particular look,"
they're a bad candidate for surgery.
And, you know, that's part of medical school training.
That's part of becoming a surgeon
is understanding what these triggers are.
What are the signs that tell you as a surgeon,
this is not gonna be someone
who's gonna be happy afterwards.
- Whether or not you are inherently truly happy or not,
I think that's hugely important.
But what if you're a happy person but you hate your nose?
Or what if you're a very happy person
and you were born with a cleft palate,
and you want to be able to project your image to the world?
That's congruent with how you feel on the inside
and maybe you're experiencing negativity
because of the way you were born naturally.
- Every day,
I experienced stories of empowerment with patients,
but for me, a particular one comes essentially
from someone who was so unempowered by her experiences.
This girl, she was 23 at the time,
was beat by her father when she was younger
and sustained significant trauma to her nose,
and helping her and fixing her nose
and the gratitude she showed
and realizing that you didn't help her for that day,
you didn't help her for that week,
its for the rest of her life.
She can start moving on.
And that empowerment is a perfect example
of what cosmetic surgery.
And that truly was that,
it was just a cosmetic surgery.
It was not so she could breathe.
It wasn't so she could move around better.
It was to make her look a certain way
so she doesn't have to remember that experience.
- [Erin] There is too much pressure on women
to look a certain way.
- We live in a Insta-life now with,
you know, we have dating apps
where you can swipe hundreds of people a day
and, you know, you can go online
and post a good selfie of yourself
and get, you know, hundreds of likes
and you feel like there's so much pressure
to look and be a certain way like you can never fall.
- If you just kind of look at the way
that things have changed around pregnancy,
a lot of women now wanna go
and have a baby with a beat face,
like everything is perfect.
It's about the perfect picture.
I have to have my makeup and my brows now.
I understand, some things, you just wanna be perfect.
I get it.
I wanna be able to just embrace the moments with my child
and not worry about all this makeup I have on right now.
- I think we've been kind of comparing,
you know, say, the 25 year old to the 25 year old.
But then, let's think about the women that are middle aged
and are having to keep up- - Absolutely.
- with the younger girls
to try and still feel attractive and relevant.
And I do see that a lot, even with my clientele.
I have women that are married to very wealthy men
and that their greatest fear is that they will end up
becoming the second wife
because the new and improved wife is on her way in
and she's on her way out.
So this pressure to maintain youth and beauty and relevance
is so huge for them.
- But not really realizing that it's that man
that is- - Is the jerk.
(participants laughing)
- You're right.
And it's like, it's not us.
- Sure. - It's really the person
that you're with.
And so I think that always having to keep up
with the Joneses
and always wanted to just like,
I have to look this way because this person
has to love me. - Sure.
- And if this person doesn't love me,
I'm gonna have to,
I have to make myself be who he loves.
- To take it to (indistinct). - It's a lot of pressure.
- [Erin] I am beautiful.
- Okay, so I'm gonna go first
because I woke up this morning and I really loved myself.
- [Participant] Okay.
- With me having vitiligo, it took a long time.
When I first was diagnosed at five,
no one knew what it was.
Everyone thought Michael Jackson made it up,
like it's a real thing.
No one knew that it was real.
So a lot of people's first time
encountering what it actually looked like in person was me.
It took a long time for me to get to this point
to where I'm just like, "Whew, I love who I am."
I'm super beautiful for things that I do,
not particularly how I look.
I mean, I'm cute.
(participants laughing)
- Yes you are. - I'm cute whatever.
You know, my brows are nice,
you know, that's it,
but I feel so beautiful
for the way that I make other people feel
and just like how I love myself.
- One of the things that happened with me
gaining the weight really fast
and then losing it really fast
is I have a lot of stretch marks.
I have a friend who's really into body positivity,
and she's a photographer,
and she took pictures of these ugly parts of me,
and she's just like, "Wow, that is so beautiful."
And like I could see through her eyes,
like I'm starting to see myself in that way
even those things that will never get fixed.
There is no way to fix them.
There is no way to replace my skin with other skin.
It's different, but it's beautiful.
- You know, if there's one message
that I wanted to get out to men today,
a simple thing like someone telling you
you look beautiful without being creepy, of course,
but someone just telling you, you look beautiful,
all of you guys look beautiful,
that makes a big difference to everyone.
Tell people they're beautiful. - Even yourself,
'cause men are beautiful too.
- Yeah. - Correct.
I thank you guys for this experience.
You guys are amazing.
- [Participant] I'm a hugger,
so... - High fives and hugs.
High five and a hug.
(participants laughing and speaking indistinctly)
- Group hug. - Thank you guys.
- Thank you guys.
- Amazing experience. - You're awesome.
- [Participant] Nice meeting you.
- Yeah.
(upbeat music)
- Hi, guys.
My name is Erin, and I'm from Jubilee Media.
I really hope you enjoyed this video
and took something away from both sides.
We really try to encourage people to listen to others
because we believe that's the first step to change.
And so check out our other work,
tell us what you think below,
and we hope you will watch another video of ours soon.